My uncle's hands have fingers gnarled and
rough from sowing seeds into the
ground that has yet to thrive back from winter.
He lays his brotherly hand on my mother's shoulder.

They stand in my grandmother's house, searching
through pictures of grandma:
young and vibrant in her senior year,
another holding my brother's baby form.
They are side-by-side to more recent photographs

of my mother in her late thirties, twisting pinkies
with my father, my brother, me.
Of my great-grandmother, her hair in curlers as she
smiles her wise old smile and
reaches out a hand to aid her daughters, then young
and naïve, baking a cake for some young sweetheart.

The women's faces are all the same in build,
smiling at someone off-camera, always productive
with sewing, or feeding, or holding,
occasionally taking time to giggle and
paint fingernails and trace outlines in the
frosted glass on the windowpanes.

My cousin and his fiancé sit nearby,
examining the pictures, his arm wrapped
around her shoulders, his fingertips like his father's.
Not from fieldwork, from welding and
cooking for his wife-to-be.

My grandfather's fingers were
just as honest twelve years ago, before
he was buried. Dirt scrubbed from under
fingernails every night, They spoke decades of
milking cows and taking the time to
love his children, wife, mother.

His mother's face was spread through his
facial expressions, and his own father's toil
on the family land erased the smooth young skin
off joints and easy handshakes.

My brother's fingers are slowly morphing
into the family-way, stained with oil and
scratches from rough engine parts. Soon,
my pictures will be placed in the boxes with

the others, and my daughters will sift through
piles of photographs and remember when
mama was young, my
mother's face emerging and breathing life
into mine. And my sons will find
some hobby to ruin their hands.

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